Unlike the Dardennes’ previous features, which plunge immediately into the turmoil of the intense ethical crises suffered by their protagonists, The Child instead follows the inexorable course of a fateful decision taken by a young petty thief with an even younger girlfriend and a newborn. The film’s suspenseful denouement brilliantly reveals the assumption of a conscience to be a gradual and nuanced process rather than a single decisive act. The film’s profound lesson resonates against its scrupulously observed portrait of life at the bottom rungs of Seraing.

This early poetic documentary follows the 1960 general strike in Belgium’s Meuse River industrial region by juxtaposing archival footage of the events against interviews with locals who recount their memories of the strike and the labor union and government response. Structuring the film and serving as its meditative center is the solo, self-sufficient voyage of a former striker up the river to Liège in a hand-built boat.